Another Decade

Posted by Roie R. Black on Sun 25 September 2016

Today I enter my eighth decade. I have been around for seven decades now. Wow! For most of my life, anyone who was 70 years old was OLD. Not it does not feel that way.

One of my Mom's best quotes went like this (on her 71st Birthday):

I don't know what happened. Last time I looked I was 18!

I now know how she felt.

It seems to take forever to hit 21, then it takes seconds to hit 70. I should be grateful that I made it this far. My adventure with cancer made that less than a certainty!

Birthday Party

Cheryl and I decided to celebrate my 70th birthday with another nice weekend at the Hanger Hotel at the airport in Fredricksburg, Texas. We actually headed out on the 24th, and did all of our celebrating a day early.

The drive to Fredricksburg takes a little over an hour from Austin, through the Texas Hill Country. It is a nice drive. We did notice that between Johnson City (Lyndon's home town) and Fredricksburg, almost every field has turned into a vineyard of some sort. Those same fields used to be nothing but peach farms. I guess the wine industry is taking over!

We got to Fredricksburg in time to check in at the hotel. IT was a bit cloudy, and rain had blown through earlier. I spotted a Navion thta had been sitting in a patch of grass on previous visits. It looked like they got it flying again:

Navion

After watching the action for a while, we headed into town for a little sight-seeing, people watching, and (oh yeah!) SHOPPING!

Fredricksburg is a very popular shopping stop in Texas, full of small stores selling all kinds of things. We were scouting a place to have dinner and poking around looking for items we could use in our Kansas City house, which is now ready to furnish! We found some super soft towels, which we will probably stock up on on our next trip! I found a new leather change gizmo that I really like and seem to lose frequently. It is round and folds up to capture the change that otherwise wanders around in a pocket. I bought two, just in case.

We found a restaurant with an appealing menu, and ended up having dinner there later in the day. A full sweep of the town and we were ready to call it a day.

O-Club

The Hanger Hotel is just that. It used to be a hanger, but they turned it into a hotel, complete with what would have been an officer's Club during the war. The entire place has a 1940's feel to it, and the club is no exception.

O-Club

There was a piano player plinking away in the club, and it was full of folks talking airplanes. Cheryl and I had a glass of wine, and listened for an hour or two. It was a nice evening. I sat there imagining what it must have felt like to be a pilot during the war, sitting in a club like this knowing that in the morning, it would be another flight into combat!

I heard one guy talking to another. Both were pilots. The first one said he had stopped in Fredricksburg on a trip from the west coast to Florida, and ended up staying for four days. That seems to be a common thing. This place, and the diner next door is very popular with pilots, who fly in for coffee, or a quick meal, then head out. The Hanger Hotel has two decks along the parking ramp, and sitting there watching the traffic is a peaceful way to spend some time, especially if you are into airplanes. Of course, that is me!

The club was still going strong when Cheryl and I headed up our room and called it a night.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the Airport Diner, another 1940's vintage place. When we got there, it was already full with area pilots. It is staffed by "Diner Dolls" and "Hanger Guys"!

The Johnson Home

On the way back home, we decided to stop and visit the Johnson Family home outside Johnson City. Both Lyndon and Lady-Bird are buried there, in a family cemetery on their property.

Johnson Cemetary

The ranch was Johnson's Western White House during his term as President, and the tour focuses on life there during that time. You get to see a lot of the home, and the grounds around it, where Lyndon grew up as a kid. It is neat looking at the state of the art in technology, from the mid 1960s. Lyndon had several place sin the home where three televisions were lined up. He would tune in to all three major networks and watch what was happening. Today, CNN fills that role, it seems.

The home also has an airport. Lyndon would fly into Austin, and switch planes to a smaller jet that could land on the ranch. The plane he used is on display next to the house. I bought a book written by his pilot on Air Force One during his term.

Air Force 2

Home Again

After our tour of the Johnson Ranch was done, we headed back to Austin. We managed a stop at the local WoodCrafters store to look for a shop vacuum for my new workshop. That will be my birthday present from Cheryl this year! It will come in handy when I finally get power in that place!

We got home in time to feed the cat.

I am officially 70 now, even though we celebrated that with all my class mates a couple of months ago in Virginia! Here is hoping I get to do this again. We will see (with a little help from the folks at M.D. Anderson!)

I have to thank Cheryl for making this a nice weekend together. We both commented that if we retired, we could do this more often. Maybe we are on to something!

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